BBall Battle

Big Bang Theory, S05E17

Wow, I have to admit that Big Bang has been pretty good lately.  This week's episode was probably one of my favorites.  The two stories were about Sheldon and Kripke fighting over an office and Penny being unable to tell Amy that she didn't like her gift.  Usually I would hate stories that focused too much on Sheldon and Penny, but these were too funny to let their usual character annoyances bother me.

First I'll talk about Penny's problem.  Amy gets her a little something, and it's no surprise that it's more than a little something.  In fact, it's a $3000 portrait of the two of them.  And it's huge.  She has no choice but to put it up in her apartment to spare Amy's feelings, but when she talks to Bernadette, she realizes she has to come clean about it or hide the painting after Amy leaves each time.  I liked that Penny tried to use Bernadette as an excuse why she couldn't hang it up.  Her idea was that Bernadette would be jealous.  Bernadette quickly and smartly refused the idea, afraid that Amy might get her one.  Oo.  That is a serious fear.  Especially since the portrait makes Penny look like a transvestite, according to Bernadette.

I knew it wouldn't take long for Amy to discover that Penny hated it, but I was surprised how quickly she grabbed her giant portrait and ran back to her apartment.  Penny is a horrible liar.  Amy wouldn't have had to find out why she took down their portrait, if only she used a fraction of her brain.  Back at Amy's apartment, Penny fails to nicely let Amy know her true feelings and instead cops out and makes Bernadette the scapegoat anyway!  Amy falls for this lie, but thankfully since Penny is being kinda evil to throw Bernadette into the equation, Amy doesn't give a damn about Bernadette's feelings.  Wow.  She really does love Penny.  I think that Penny is lucky to have Amy, despite that she is a little over-enthusiastic.  And pretty creepy (who commissions a naked picture of yourself and your best friend!).  When push comes to shove, I'm pretty sure that Amy would rush to her side and help her out when she needed it.  When it comes to girlfriends, you have to have someone like that.

Now onto the main story about Sheldon and Kripke.  You gotta love Kripke with his Elmer Fudd-sounding self.  He's one of the few scientists at their university who doesn't seem like the biggest nerd on the planet. And he's hardly intimidated by Sheldon and refuses to let him have the Rothman office just because he claimed seniority.  They later go to the president while he was in the bathroom.  The president didn't give a damn about their squabble.  So they had no choice but to battle it out themselves.

Sheldon was being his usual insane self by proclaiming that if Kripke didn't listen to reason and let him have the office, he would poison his tea.  Good God!  Do you need to murder someone just to get an office of your own??  He really is like a step away from being mad scientist, causing havoc to all of the innocent townspeople.  They eventually settle on a contest where they are both equally disadvantaged: sports.  For some reason, I would have thought that Kripke was a little more athletic.  This episode removed any idea of that for me.

Leonard takes them to play basketball.  They are the worst players ever!  Not only do they cower away from the ball when Leonard first passes it to them, but they couldn't put the ball in the basket if the basket was on the ground and 1 foot away from them!  I was laughing pretty much the entire time, but my favorite part was when Kripke dribbles across the court and then straight into the wall:

Time.  Ran out of room.

LOL!  Thankfully, after they are all sweaty from their fumbling around, Leonard suggests that the person who bounces the ball the highest in the air will win.  Sheldon manages to win that.  As silly as the outcome of their battle is, I doubt anyone would dare try to overturn the results.  That was more than enough to declare Sheldon the winner after their horrible basketball playing.

To my delight, karma had plans for Sheldon.  His new office was, in fact, horrible.  We knew this as soon as we saw the ex-employee Rothman standing naked behind Sheldon's door when he first came in.  Of all the problems that Sheldon described from the room, including a mysterious hole, uncontrollable temperature, and vibrations from the geology lab above, my favorite complaint was the one he had with the mockingbird trying to imitate the song of a wind chime.  According to Sheldon, the bird was out of tune and was intentionally mocking him.  God, he is a nutcase!  But he is too stubborn with all of these problems to give up the office to Kripke and move back in with Raj.

Speaking of Raj, who didn't have much of a role in this episode, it was funny how he admired the naked Rothman at the beginning of the episode.  I was expecting him to say something to support the homosexuality he sometimes gives off, but he was concentrated on the hat.  Oh, Raj.  And he's such a dork to order a Harry Potter wand on Ebay!  It turned out to be just a stick, but he eventually accepted it because it had numbers inscribed on it as if it were a real product.  He's an idiot, but I love him.

Leonard, too, had a backseat role this time, but I liked that in the end of the episode he took a picture of Sheldon with his head stuck in the wall instead of going to get help for him.  He's a nice guy because I would have kicked Sheldon in his ass and pushed him further in there.  Or tossed something on him that would have made him freak out (because he's a germaphobe).  The possibilities were endless.

Great job this week, Big Bang!  For a secondary show of mine, it's nice to see an episode of caliber of one of my primary ones.